there is no hell but the one you made
by iateyourheart
Summary: on a crowded subway, Quinn gets a little piece of heaven. takes place in 2x22 "New York", faberry.
1. there is no hell

Title: there is no hell (but the one you made)

Summary: glee_kink_meme fill - on a crowded subway, Quinn gets a little piece of heaven. Takes place in 2x22 "New York", faberry.

**Warnings**: dubcon.

Prompt: During New Directions' trip to NY, they used the subways at some point. Cue a very packed subway and Quinn, seeing it as her only chance, trying to subtly grope Rachel, who doesn't really know who it is at first until Quinn does something to give it away. I'd like if she were wearing a skirt. No one else on the subway notices.

* * *

The way Finn's been moon-eyeing Rachel from Ellis Island to Yankee Stadium makes Quinn want to vomit, and the moment the doors open and the subway car packs in, she indulges in a fantasy where she spews pea soup bile all over the back of his head.

It used to keep her up at night - Finn's never looking at her with the same amount of pain and ecstasy he always seemed to muster for Rachel - after all, Quinn Fabray was built to inspire that sort of reaction in men (and if that sculpted nose, and these lipoed thighs, and those shaved cheekbones couldn't keep a dopey high school quarterback away from a girl with all of her character flaws firmly on display then what the hell had it all been for?)

And Quinn used to be good at turning Finn's obvious loyalties into something like jealous girlfriend or jealous ex rage. It sat heavy on the anger of a jealous secret admirer, and kept it squashed down just below Quinn's heart where she liked it to be.

(it was a lump that weighed heavy and uncomfortable on her insides, but when firmly in place, she never thought about why Rachel chose Finn or the real reason that fact made her miserable, so she breathed a bit easier.)

She watches Finn lean down and whisper in Rachel's ear, she watches Rachel's shoulders rise and fall with laughter, she watches Finn's hesitant fingers brush against the hem of Rachel's skirt, she coats him from head to toe with throw up in her mind.

Quinn's truth has dislodged, slipped around a ventricle and swirls emboldened around her chest. She's poking Finn in the side, she's telling him Puck wants to see him, because right now the lies have been sucked up and her body is a car with its brake line dragging on the ground.

* * *

Before Lucy's first communion, she got the bottom of her pretty white dress stained with playground dirt (an offense for which she would have to write out the rosary prayer fifty times.) Though she normally feared the wrath of Russell Fabray, there was the more pressing matter of hunting down Emily Connor from across the street.

Lucy had to tell her they couldn't be friends anymore. There'd been times where holding Emily's hand had felt better than opening all of her presents on Christmas morning, but as her mother had gently explained one evening when Lucy and Emily had been caught doing just that, there was a place for people with those feelings and it wasn't in heaven with their loved ones.

"_And your dad would be so disappointed_. _You wouldn't want to do that_, _would you_?"

When she took the Eucharist, Lucy allowed the priest to place it on her tongue the way she'd seen her father do.

* * *

There are two more stops before they reach the hotel, the space around her becomes crowded and Quinn is pushed up against Rachel's back. Quinn's hands grip Rachel's side to steady her feet - it's a touch that should've lasted half a second, but Rachel leans back and Quinn can't will her arms to move.

Slowly, she presses her fingers into the fabric of Rachel's blouse one by one.

* * *

Quinn had never taken confession seriously, but one evening she came home from cheer practice to find her diary splayed open on her bed, and her mother looking very grim.

Judy demanded to know all about Rachel Berry, and just why Quinn thought she loved to stare at her during World History, and just why Quinn thought about the shape of her animal sweaters. She made Quinn throw all tangible evidence that said Rachel Berry made her daughter's heart stop and explode in the trashcan out back.

"_What if your dad had seen this_? _What do you think he'd say_?"

After that, Quinn made time to sit with one of the fathers at St. Peter's once a week.

* * *

"Finn?"

Rachel's voice is high and uncharacteristically uncertain. One hand dropped to the hem of that skirt, and did what Finn lacked the courage to do - lift it up.

"What if someone…" Rachel begins, and Quinn puts her lips near her ear.

"Shhh." Quinn lowers her voice an octave while her fingers trip back and forth over the skin between Rachel's thigh and her ass. "Keep your eyes straight ahead, Rach."

* * *

Dinners at the Fabray house were a predictable affair; Quinn and her sister, Fanny, set the table, Judy placed the biggest piece of meat on her husband's plate, and Russell inquired about everyone's day.

Fine. Everybody was always fine, and nobody was happy.

* * *

Quinn shushes her every time Rachel's breathing dangerously increases. The wet between Quinn's fingers and Rachel's panties grows with each motion, and Quinn hopes that when she dies hell won't be enough to contain her.

Rachel arches back, and Quinn hopes that when she makes this girl come that women will give birth to snakes and the moon will drip away in blood, and fire will engulf the earth, and that God lets her father know exactly who's responsible.

"I never want to see a pair of pants on you," Quinn says in that ear she's grown quite fond of. "Only skirts, and dresses. And knee socks. God, I miss those fucking knee socks."

It takes a second longer than it should have for Quinn to realize she forgot to lower her voice.

Her breath catches when Rachel stiffens, and she wants to scream when Rachel holds her hand in place. The train jerks to a stop, and Quinn pulls away sandwiching herself between an old woman with grocery bags and suit-clad man with a phone jammed against his ear.

* * *

She'd never seen Santana cry, and it was obvious from the way the girl huffed and swallowed that she wasn't the kind to normally get teary in front of others.

Downstairs the other Cheerios were letting wine cooler tipsiness determine how far they'd let the football team's hands wander - upstairs, Brittany was busy fastening her bra and Santana was making fists.

"_If you tell anyone_, _I swear to god, Fabray_…"

Quinn would never tell, because she was certain Santana wouldn't tell on her either.

* * *

She watches Brittany giggle and place her foam Liberty hat on Santana's head, while Rachel pulls at her arm and calls her name. She watches Brittany and Santana lock pinkies because they think no one is looking, while Rachel pulls on her arm and calls her name.

"Quinn, I really think we should talk about…"

"About what?" she snaps. She and Rachel stop in the middle of the sidewalk, and let the rest of the group fade into the distance.

Rachel blushes, her head dipping for a moment of composure. "What happened on-on the subway."

Quinn arches a brow. "And what do you think happened?"

"I…well, I mean…" Rachel shakes her head, growing flustered. "You _know_," she whispers harshly.

"I don't." Quinn swallows. "Try to keep me out of your little lesbian fantasies."

That wounded look that is as familiar to Quinn as the back of her hand settles onto Rachel's face, and Quinn catches her own reflection in the store mirror just before Rachel walks away without another word.

With the truth back in place just below her heart, Quinn thinks perhaps she's grown a bit stale and lost some of her charms. That it has to be the reason behind her losing Finn's worshipful gaze. And Quinn Fabray was built for exactly for this, so maybe she should change her game.

Perhaps she'll cut her hair.

* * *

Notes: "everybody's fine and nobody's happy" - Louie C.K.

the title is taken from the Murder by Death song "no oath, no spell".

thank you for reading.


	2. there is no curse

Title: there is no curse (we haven't spoken)

Summary: quinn can only kiss Rachel in darkened spaces. Post 2x22 "new york", faberry.

Notes: I got a few requests for a sequel to "there is no hell", so here is your follow-up :). I tried to make this less bleak, but in my head high school Faberry is a black, angsty abyss because I have this irritating need to make it fit around canon (and this is why I write chaptered college fic to keep from hurling myself right out of a window.) Anyway, I hope you all enjoy.

Also: on a whim I decided to make a tumblr for my writing (thisyears-girl dot tumblr dot com) I won't clog it up with chaptered fic updates, but you'll find one/two shots like this, and some original material of dubious quality. It's totally bare bones at the moment, but I'm going to try not to be lazy about it.

And if you prefer AO3, I'm now on there, too (iateyourheart).

Reviews are loved and appreciated. Thanks for reading.

* * *

The Mack has a few dime bag clients at the Lima Country Club, and the first time Quinn caught her selling to the mayor's son out behind the pool, she fully intended to call the police. But a moment of clarity struck in which she realized familial status outweighed the law, and nothing really mattered anyway in the long run, so she tightly gripped the towel draped around her neck and casually walked by the two, taking on her lifeguard post perfectly in time.

Every other Tuesday between the hours of four and six, Quinn would pass The Mack. Towel grips and straight-ahead eyes became curt nods in general directions, and Quinn tried once very late at night (while floating in an irritating space between sleep and wakefulness), to pinpoint exactly when it was that 'nodding' had become 'sharing cigarettes', but her head was always cloudy these days and one moment drifted into another creating endless streams of existence she neither cared to, nor had the energy to make heads or tails of.

One evening she spent her break tossing cigarettes out the passenger window of Mack's _Firebird_, when the other girl got a sudden serious look on her face and said, "I want you to come to a party tonight."

Quinn didn't bother to hide the fact she was drunk when she made it home some time after six that morning, because in the unlikelihood Judy woke up from her stupor, Quinn would simply tell her to embrace one of the few things they had in common.

* * *

"_Look, I get it if you need some time to be miserable- make a voodoo doll out of Finn's back hair or whatever you gotta do to cope with that loss- but, if you don't bring your ass to the next glee practice, I am going to unhinge my jaw and swallow you whole_."

"It's summer break."

"_You tell that to Berry, because after I've finished digesting her, I'm coming after you_."

"All I want is my three months away, San. Come September, I'll be more than happy to start gearing up for another loss at Nationals."

"_You are a goddamn bummer, you know that? We all want a break, but if you're gonna be a part of this team you gotta put the work in_."

From her bedroom window Quinn watches Mack's car pull up alongside the driveway. On the second horn blast, she cradles her cell to her ear, throws her purse over her shoulder and heads for the door.

"Okay."

"_Okay_?"

"Yeah," Quinn says as she passes by her mother's listless form on the living room couch. "Consider me officially off of the team."

* * *

The funny thing about The Skanks is they all hail from the well-off part of town; Shelia's adoptive parents are dentists, and Ronnie always manages to smell like sour milk but her house is immaculate, and Mack's dad baked oatmeal cookies the first time Quinn slept over (Quinn never mentions the discrepancy between the group's persona and their reality. She understands the need to be something you're not.)

They dye Quinn's hair in Shelia's bathtub, and spend the rest of the night chucking rocks at cars from the top of an overpass.

* * *

"You have to be a member to swim here."

Rachel is standing in front of Quinn, towel clinging to her waist and gym bag dangling from her hand. It is June 10th and Quinn hasn't seen Rachel since New York. Up until now, she had a very good game going whereupon all knowledge that a Rachel Barbara Berry was a living, breathing thing sharing the same zip code, the same stretch of sky was banished to the back of her mind. Quinn let text reminders of glee practices and strategy inquiries pile up unread in her inbox. She stripped Rachel's contact entry of its name. It was a faceless number that belonged to no one with any bearing on her life (and certainly not the bane and center of her existence.)

(And Quinn has never truly hated Rachel, except for right now - and it is so deep and white hot of a feeling that if Rachel were to go down in the pool from a leg cramp or crack her head on the diving board, Quinn would not rush to save her.)

"I - I have a visitors pass." Rachel extends a small slip of paper in Quinn's direction that names Mike Chang as her sponsor. Quinn will never let him in for an early swim again. "I hit a plateau with my elliptical, and there's this old guy at the community pool that keeps trying to touch my hair, so Mike offered to let me swim here."

Quinn slips her sunglasses back on, rakes a hand over her ponytail to smooth out any ridges, and walks away thinking 'whatever' but not having the energy to say it.

* * *

When her father moved out, Quinn stopped going to mass. There was a week or two where Judy woke bright and early on Sunday morning, and peeked a disapproving head into her daughter's room, but then she started drinking her lunch and along the way forgot to try to keep up appearances.

* * *

"Hey, bitch! You got eye problems?"

From her position against the hood of Mack's car, Quinn can make out Rachel's form in the distance. Rachel doesn't move an inch or say a word, and Quinn briefly directs her gaze to Shelia, and the razor blade she's palming through her pocket.

"You need to not be so hostile." Mack rolls her eyes.

"_Noo_, what I need is for someone to tell that chick no one over here is in a staring contest, because I'm not here for that shit. You _know_ I'm not here for that shit," Shelia says.

Quinn watches Rachel shift her weight from one foot to the other, back and forth, and back and forth again.

"Fucking chill - she's just staring at Quinn. She does it all the time, she's got a hard-on, Stabby McStabberson."

"Did I say I was gonna stab her?"

"Nonverbally."

With a huff, Shelia faces Rachel once more and cups her hands around her mouth. "Hey, bitch! Look over here one more time, and Imma fuck you up."

* * *

Rachel always does two hundred laps. Rachel always wears hair caps and modest racing swimsuits. And with her sunglasses on, no one knows it's Rachel, Quinn's always watching from the tower.

* * *

"You gotta hold still…"

"I _know_."

"I'm serious, dude. I don't wanna poke your eye out."

"Good. I don't want my eye poked out."

"Ready? On three - one…two…"

They pierced Quinn's nose with a safety pin some time after Mack's dad went out to pick up Chinese.

Quinn feels as if she's been punched in the face (or what she imagines being punched in the face must feel like since despite all deserving actions, she's never found herself on the receiving end of a fist.) Sitting cross-legged on Mack's bed, she miserably holds an icepack to her right nostril and sips occasionally from a half-empty bottle of apple pucker.

"Don't be such a pussy," Mack teases.

"Is it supposed to be oozing like this?" Quinn grumbles, and Mack shrugs turning her attention back towards the pile of marijuana and the scale on her desk.

"I'll take full responsibility if your nose falls off."

Quinn catches her reflection in the dresser mirror - swollen and red, her face neither feels nor looks like her own, and she almost hopes it never heals. She pictures her perfect, little nose turning into a rotting, putrid thing. It overtakes her features, makes the flesh necrotize and her eyelids droop, and the world's best surgeons would fail to save her sending her back to being an ugly slip of a girl that no one expected anything from.

"Just don't pick at it," Mack says. "It'll be fine in a few days."

* * *

"I'm never going back to glee club, so you should go waste your summer elsewhere."

"As much as I would love to see you with us in the choir room again, I don't come here to try to get you to help me win a trophy."

"…Then why do you come here? There are ten other pools in this town I don't work at that you could go to, Rachel. _Ten_."

"I…I don't have an answer for that."

"Cut the shit."

"Honestly! If I said I come here three days a week to keep you from screwing up the looks of my extracurricular achievements on my application to Julliard, or - or that I'm here to _Gaslight_ you, it would be a complete lie. There really is an old man who's obsessed with my hair, but I asked Mike if I could use his membership. I don't know why. I wish more than anything I could tell you."

* * *

Her nose heals, and manages to look more elegant with the tiny, gold hoop. Quinn contemplates taking it out.

It is July 4th and when her shift at the pool ends, she finds Mack and Ronnie waiting for her at the edge of the parking lot. Mack's already cramped car is filled with fireworks, and as Quinn approaches, Ronnie launches bang-snaps at her feet.

"_Are you ready to celebrate 'Murica_, _Quinn_?" Ronnie asks with an exaggerated Southern accent.

"We are gonna get so stupid tonight," Mack says. "I have to make a quick pit stop to pick up some party supplies, but other than that everything's golden, dude.

"_We're gonna ride the wave of freedom on the backs of double whoppers and Toby Keith_…"

"Sounds awesome," Quinn says.

Ronnie fires another bang-snap at Quinn's toes. "_We're gonna make it rain eagles_, _and those eagles will turn into baby Jesus's just before they're cradled safely to the ground_…"

Mack grins. "I see Jeepers Creepers didn't have any special plans for the day."

"_We're gonna skull fuck you with red, white, and blue_…"

Quinn doesn't bother turning around. She knows that just over her shoulder, Rachel is off in the distance leaning against the brick wall with her eyes trained on the edge of the parking lot. "You ready?"

"Yeah - yeah, give me a sec. Hey!" Mack waves in Rachel's direction. "Hey! C'mere for a minute!

Quinn feels the earth slip out from under her feet. "What the hell are you doing?"

Mack ignores her. "Just for minute!" she shouts.

"I'm serious," Quinn says around the hard knot in her throat, "leave her alone. She's harmless."

"What?" Mack gives her a look. "If Creeper's got no place to be, then she can come and be no place with us." She shrugs. "I'm feeling charitable today."

"Mack," Quinn says just before her chest begins to cave in, "where is she supposed to sit?"

The length of skin where their thighs are touching grows increasingly clammy, and with every turn Rachel slides just a little and looks at Quinn - eyes full of pained apologies - as she readjusts.

Fifteen miles. Quinn rides fifteen miles to a truck stop outside of Lima with Rachel Berry sitting in her lap; though she wills them at her side, her fingertips drift towards what's not covered by Rachel's shorts. Quinn's fingers brush. They hold still. They dig into the seat. They brush again.

Mack says she won't be gone long, and Rachel squirms when the car door slams.

In the _Super 8_ parking lot across the street, two boys chase each other with sparklers, and there's a steady breeze blowing through the downed windows that carries the scent of barbeque and it whips Rachel's hair so that Quinn's senses are full of steak one minute, and lavender the next.

"Sorry," Rachel whispers.

Quinn's fingers hold still. They curl against Quinn's chest. They hold still again. They sweep Rachel's hair over her right shoulder.

"_Gawd_, I gotta pee," Ronnie announces from the front seat. Without another word, she makes a big show of climbing out of the car, and Rachel squirms in Quinn's lap.

Quinn's fingers grip Rachel's side. They press firmly. They ease up. They never move.

"Be still."

When Rachel gives her another pained apology, the sky casts a purplish shadow over the car, and a tire burns out from near the intersection.

Rachel's hand - previously folded in her lap - comes up to rest just over Quinn's heart. "You remember that episode of _Buffy_ where Riley's heart starts going crazy, and he thinks he's like _Superman_?"

Quinn swallows. "I wasn't allowed to watch it."

"Oh," she says. "The way your heart's beating...it just reminded me of that."

Rachel's bangs blow to one side in the wind; Quinn's fingers brush them back into place.

"Quinn…?"

"Yeah?"

"I realize I'm making a stereotypical judgment here, and if I'm wrong please don't hesitate to correct me. But, I sort of got the impression that you come from a place where sharing feelings is punishable by death- unfortunately, the Berrys are a talkative bunch so I have to at least get this out, and I promise I'll never mention it again."

"_Whatever_."

Rachel's eyes screw shut, and Quinn's ears fill with blood and bass from the rap song pouring out of a passing truck.

"I knew you weren't Finn," Rachel says. "That day on the subway - I knew you weren't Finn, and I can't stop thinking about it."

Quinn can feel blood seeping out of every pore in her body. "And what's that supposed to mean to me?"

"I don't know," she says softly.

The street lights flicker on, and Rachel keeps scrunching the fabric of Quinn's shirt, and their foreheads are touching but they aren't saying anything, and Quinn wishes New York never happened because she can only ever kiss Rachel in darkened spaces and if she starts now, she won't be able to stop. She imagines forming a republic along that right shoulder with her mouth, and molds hills and valleys over Rachel's legs with her hands.

* * *

Upon seeing his daughter for their first scheduled weekend together, Russell Fabray turned very red and told his soon-to-be ex wife, that no child of his would go anywhere with _him_ while looking like _that_. So Quinn takes her bags to Mack's, and decides to let Shelia's cousin give her a tattoo of Ryan Seacrest's face.


End file.
